Osservazioni sulla sintassi dell’Edda Poetica

In Old Norse there is a difference in the placing of the finite verb between prose texts, which only allow V1 and V2 orders, and poetry, in which V3 and V-late orders are also attested. The present article aims to examine such a distinction, particularly under a generative theoretical framework. Whereas analyses of the syntax of Old Norse prose find the structural position of the finite verb in C/I, uniformly head-initial, the syntax of Old Norse poetry seems to require a variable base in the IP to derive V3 and V-late orders. However, such a derivation would generate structural ambiguities in some cases and theoretical problems in others, the solution to which has recently been proposed in an analysis, developed for other old Germanic languages, that also offers an interpretation of the pragmatic function of V3 orders: that of topicalizing elements known to the interlocutors.